Politics|Key Takeaways From Trump’s Decision to Use a National Emergency to Build a Border Wall

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Key Takeaways From Trump’s Decision to Use a National Emergency to Build a Border Wall

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A Mexican federal police officer looked toward the United States on the banks of the Rio Grande in Piedras Negras, Mexico. President Trump will declare a state of emergency at the southern border.CreditCreditMiguel Sierra/EPA, via Shutterstock

In the Rose Garden on Friday, he said he was declaringa national emergency to build a wall on the border with Mexico, using money from other federal accounts, after Congress declined to authorize sufficient funds to satisfy him in legislation that averts another government shutdown.

Mr. Trump is wielding extraordinary power to get his way. Democrats strenuously dispute that there is a national security crisis on the border that warrants using the kind of presidential authority that in the past has been used for grave matters like the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Here are six takeaways from Mr. Trump’s action.

Trump will go to almost any length to appease his base

But more hard-line elements within the party scalded Mr. Trump with criticism, including the Fox host Laura Ingraham and the conservative commentator Ann Coulter. But as The New York Times reported early Friday, the president felt cornered into accepting the deal and agreed to it only with Mr. McConnell’s promise to support an emergency declaration.

Still, the White House assuaged some other skeptics of the funding deal, namely Sean Hannity on Fox and the radio host Rush Limbaugh, both of whom in effect announced the president’s decision in advance and encouraged their followers to fall in line.

Mr. Trump is willing to risk the blowback, even from members of his party, and a possible court defeat, if it means he can tell his core supporters that he did all he could to build the wall.

Democrats probably can’t stop him, but they can make it awkward

They can vote to terminate the president’s declaration on the grounds that there is no emergency — there is strong sentiment among Democrats to do that — which would force Republicans in the Senate to make a tough vote over Mr. Trump’s extraordinary exercise of power.

Already, Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, has been sharply critical of the president using his authority this way, and fellow Republican Senators Marco Rubio of Florida and Rand Paul of Kentucky also have been highly skeptical. Mr. Paul called it “extraconstitutional.”

So the president’s action will force Republicans to decide whether to back him — and then set a precedent for a future Democratic president to use power this way — or embarrass Mr. Trump with a vote that could undo his declaration. The president could veto the resolution, and the declaration would likely remain in place because there would not be sufficient votes to override it, but his standing would be undermined.

Pulling money from elsewhere could make new enemies

Mr. Trump has to find money from other federal programs to make up a $4 billion shortfall from his initial demand for border wall funding. He can do this by taking money from funding for projects.

The declaration enables Mr. Trump to divert $3.6 billion budgeted for military construction projects, and he will also tap into $2.5 billion from counternarcotics programs and $600 million from a Treasury Department asset forfeiture fund. All told, that leaves him with about $8 billion for the wall, including the $1.375 billion authorized by Congress in the spending package that averts a government shutdown.

Each of those pots of money comes with a specific constituency that authorized it in the first place, and those constituencies may not be pleased to see it used for another purpose.

What about a court challenge?

With this declaration, a court challenge is a near certainty. A party opposing the president will probably seek an injunction — a halt in the action — while the matter is litigated. Yet every day that the wall is not built could undermine Mr. Trump’s fundamental premise that there is an emergency at the border.

The challenges are likely to be many, in jurisdictions from coast to coast, increasing the chances that new construction would not start any time soon.

Watch how Nancy Pelosi responds

Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California has been among the few Democrats who seem to be able to stare down the president.

In this case, she has offered a not-so-subtle warning about what she sees as an abuse of the emergency authority. She pointed to the mass shootings in the United States, and noted that perhaps the president should issue a national emergency about guns.

That could be a mere preview of how she and the Democrats will frame the case against the president, starting with the idea that he has abused his constitutional authority.

After his speech on Friday, Ms. Pelosi and Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, vowed to try to overturn the decision.

“This is plainly a power grab by a disappointed president, who has gone outside the bounds of the law to try to get what he failed to achieve in the constitutional legislative process,” they said in a joint statement.

Expect to hear a lot from Ms. Pelosi about a basic tenet of American government, that Congress is a coequal branch of government that is not cowed by presidential whim.

Trump may have undercut his own case

The president’s penchant for improvisation may not have served him well. In making his case for a national emergency, Mr. Trump said that he could have waited, but he did not want to, so he declared an emergency.

“I could do the wall over a longer period of time,” the president said. “I didn’t need to do this but I’d rather do it much faster.”

Then he noted that he had so much money from the legislation that averted a shutdown that money was not really an issue.

”We have so much money, we don’t know what to do with it,” Mr. Trump said. “I don’t know what to do with all the money they’re giving us. It’s crazy. “

Those two admissions could be the foundation of a legal challenge to his national emergency declaration.